No, it’s not a mirage. It’s the Maraya Concert Hall

It’s easy to think that it’s an illusion – the desert can play tricks with the mind. Then you realise there really is an incredible, mirrored building in the heart of the Arabian Desert. With ancient, wind-carved, sandstone mountains reflected along its length, so that the structure seems to disappear and then reappear from the landscape.

This is the Maraya Concert Hall, confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest mirrored building ever constructed. 9740 square metres, or 105,000 square feet, of mirrored glass in a location no one would expect. And although ‘Maraya’ means ‘mirrors’ in Arabic, this isn’t standard mirrored glass, it’s a new formulation specially developed by Guardian Glass – in just three months.

Nabil El Ahmar, at that time Mega Projects and Strategic Partnership Manager at Guardian Glass, was first invited to view the project after an attempt at a mirrored solution by a different company had failed. The exterior was cloaked in what can only be described as giant sheets of metal, reflecting a distorted and wrinkled version of the surroundings. As Nabil says “We were shocked to find it wasn’t even a mirror”, then recalls immediately thinking: “Surely we have a better solution.”

A competitive tender was announced and a meeting arranged with the Guardian team. It soon became clear the competing proposals were all variations of highly reflective silver glass with reflective coatings, and were not felt to be right – “The designer wanted a real mirror,” Nabil explains, “with the sand and mountains, a more visible building would be an intrusion to the environment”. Only Guardian accepted the challenge to create a new exterior mirror glass able to resist such extreme conditions, and were awarded the contract.

"It had to stand against some of the harshest elements on the planet, and one of the most outstanding features of copper is corrosion resistance", Nabil El Ahmar

Winning the contract was the easy part, however. “From this point, the real work started,” Nabil says. Encasing a 500-seat concert hall in the middle of a vast desert, with giant mirrors, was a mammoth technical and logistical puzzle in its own right.

But the team had another hurdle to overcome: the deadline. Concert season would start in December, just three months away, and the performers were already booked and the tickets sold. “Not delivering the mirrors on time would have been catastrophic for everyone,” continues Nabil. They set to work.

“Ingenuity and perseverance paid off as we had to develop solutions for Maraya Concert Hall’s unique needs” Jasmin Hodzic, AME Marketing Director at Guardian Glass

Developers have always shied away from using real mirrors as exteriors. One reason is durability. Ultraviolet and infrared light can erode the mirror coating. While intense sunlight or humidity can cause panels to oxidize, distort and discolor. To address these issues a new copper mirror was developed, based on the highly durable Guardian UltraMirror™ interior mirror, but with a special protective coating. “It had to stand against some of the harshest elements on the planet, and one of the most outstanding features of copper is corrosion resistance,” says Nabil.

This also required a new logistics process. Mirror glass is normally produced in standard raw sheets using annealed glass, then sent to a processor for cutting. However, because of the extreme temperatures the Maraya’s exterior would be exposed to the glass had to be tempered, and so couldn’t be cut after being coated without breaking. Guardian solved this by sending the raw annealed glass to the processor. The processor then sent the raw glass, cut to size and heat treated, back to Guardian, who applied the protective coating.

The hard work paid off and Nabil recalls feeling a mixture of deep satisfaction and relief the first time he saw Maraya’s finished mirrored exterior. “First convincing the client about our product, then doing all the work and finally delivering it on time — it was overwhelming,” he says. A view echoed by Jad Abi Ali, Marketing Communications Manager for Africa and the Middle East. “When you persevere and push forward as a principled entrepreneur you can make it happen.”

The Maraya was a popular winner at the 2020 Architizer A+Awards in the Architecture and Glass category. For the region, it adds to the allure of the nearby Al-Hijr archaeological site – the first location in Saudi Arabia certified as a World Heritage Site. “Ingenuity and perseverance paid off as we had to develop solutions for Maraya Concert Hall’s unique needs. With this development, we have created a new value-added product that meets challenging conditions,” says Jasmin Hodzic, AME Marketing Director at Guardian Glass.

For Nabil, the recognition is gratifying, especially because of how quickly and completely the team pitched in to make the project successful. It is also what the achievement says about Guardian. “To be a global company, you have to act like a global company,” Nabil says. “I wanted to emphasize that this is Guardian and we can help achieve what may not seem possible.”

The companies involved in the project:

• Client : Royal Commission, Al Ula
• Event Agency: MMG KSA
• Project and Creative Management : Black Engineering Dwc-Llc. (Massimo Fogliati, Fabio Pavanetto)
• Architecture and Design : Gioforma Architects Designers and Artists , Milano (Florian Boje, Cristiana Picco, Claudio Santucci)
• General Engineering : Gap progetti